


fall down seven times

by strzyga



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Gen, Genderswap, Movie Tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 19:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strzyga/pseuds/strzyga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bryce hasn't thought about her parents in over a year. (originally posted to livejournal 15nov2008)</p>
            </blockquote>





	fall down seven times

Bryce hasn't thought about her parents in over a year.

Tonight, though, with the flames still burning, mist from the fire hoses clinging damp to the Kevlar, the only thing she can hear over the wailing sirens is her father's voice, "Bryce, why do we fall?"

Harvey's coin lies in the dust, seared and blackened from the explosion. She turns it over in her hand; the other side is unmarred, glowing silver-white in the pale blue of morning. The irony is not lost on her, and she feels her stomach heave.

She whispers, "So we can learn to pick ourselves up," and closes the coin in her fist, presses it to her mouth. She won't cry, though she desperately wants to.

"You can't ask me to wait," Rachel had said. She'd said, "Don't make me your one hope for a normal life. I can't give you that."

Rachel is gone.

Batman mourns, because Rachel is gone and she'll never have to wait for another thing.

 

"Thank you," Gordon whispers.

"You don't have to thank me." Her voice feels like broken glass in her throat.

"Yes I do."

Batman says nothing, and they turn as one.

Harvey lies still and shattered in the dust, face turned so that his scars catch the sickly yellow light; they are a landscape pitted and ravaged, bone seared gray and a tendon glistening pinkish white.

"The Joker won," Gordon says, voice ragged and tired, frayed around the edges. "Harvey's prosecution, everything he stood for-- undone."

Beneath her feet the gravel crunches. Bryce aches, muscle and tendon and bone, and as she shifts her weight her hip throbs; the Kevlar cushioned most of her fall, but not enough. She thinks she's broken a rib, maybe more; pain lances across her chest every time she moves, and her breath is short and thin.

"Whatever chance you gave us of saving our city dies with Harvey's reputation."

Bryce thinks of the little boy in the Narrows, whose faith in Batman was so strong that even the haze of fear toxins did not break it (she's never told anyone, even Alfred, but the sight of that young boy, faith glowing so brilliantly through the terror and the horror, had filled her with a warmth she had not felt since her parents died). She thinks of all the people Batman has saved: people who loved her, people who hated her, even the people who thought Batman was only a myth.

Something, some unnamable emotion, is rising in her chest.

"We bet it all on him," Gordon says, hoarse and raw. "The Joker took the best of us and tore him down." 

She watches Gordon swallow, sees the way his mustache quivers. He says, "People will lose hope," and sounds like simply speaking the words almost kills him.

"They won't," she says, surprising even herself. She knows she's felt like this before. She can't remember when. She says, "They must never know what he did."

"Five dead!" Gordon yelps. He sounds horrified. "Two of them _cops_. You can't sweep that--"

"No."

Gordon falls silent.

"But the Joker cannot win," Batman says. (It would kill her if he did.) She forces herself forward, stumbles, landing hard on her knees. "Gotham needs its true hero." She turns Harvey's face so that she cannot see the scars, and is thankful only that she cannot feel the ruined flesh through the Kevlar. She thinks it would probably make her sick. 

It takes Gordon only a moment to realize what she has said. He says, " _No!_ " and sounds terrified.

It takes her a moment longer. "You either die a hero," she croaks, "or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Bryce closes her eyes, tries to swallow around the lump in her throat. Oh, _Harvey_. That he would say such a thing is almost too ironic to bear. 

She heaves herself to her feet, gritting her teeth against the ache, her eyes clinging to Harvey's face. 

She knows. Knows when she's felt this before, both times: 

The night she fled Gotham, Falcone's words still ringing in her ears, she had known she wasn't ready yet, but that someday she would return to heal the city; she's not quite there, there is still work to do, but she's closer than she was ten years ago. 

The day the bat interrupted her planning (she remembers even now the emotions that had clogged her throat when she discovered Gordon was still as reliable, as _good_ as he'd been the day her parents were killed), the day she climbed down into the caves, into the bats.

"I can do those things," she says, and Gordon shakes his head desperately, the sallow light glistening on the whites of his eyes, "because I'm not a hero. Unlike Dent."

She knows now, as she had known then (with the foghorn a low, solemn sentry ringing in the night; with thousands of bats swirling wildly around her, catching in her clothes, her hair), what she has to do.

Batman says, " _I_ killed those people. That's what I can be."

"No," Gordon says, "you can't, you're _not!_ " He reaches out, as though to grab her arm, as though it would stop her.

"You proved me wrong, you know," Rachel had said, what seemed like forever ago. "Your father would be very proud of you."

_Rachel._

"I'm whatever Gotham needs me to be," Batman says. The night comes alive around her as she takes Gordon's hand and wraps his fingers around the two-way radio.

Gordon swallows, eyes falling defeated to their hands.

Batman says, "Call it in."

**Author's Note:**

> fourth work being moved from livejournal, long after the fact.
> 
> originally written for the [knightfest](http://knightfest.livejournal.com/) challenge, prompt [#49](http://community.livejournal.com/knightfest/551.html?thread=7463#t7463). this was kind of stuffed into the prompt -- experience has shown me that i am virtually incapable of writing something to accurately fit what has been prompted -- but i'm still strangely fond of this piece? my thoughts on this fitting the prompt were an interpretation of 'photograph' as a piece of frozen time, like a memory. so uh. worked lots of memories in here?
> 
> this was also supposed to be one piece in a much longer series of works revolving around a genderswapped bruce wayne, ranging from bryce through the span of batman begins to the introduction of dick grayson/robin. unfortunately i never managed to get any of the other pieces finished, but who knows. i'm still ridiculously fond of this 'verse, so maybe someday.
> 
> the following is a direct quote from the notes on the original post:
> 
> "bit of a plot device spoiler to clear up something that, logistically speaking, appears to be an inconsistency: my thoughts on bryce/batman is that, when she first gets the suit, it is the same suit given to bruce in the actual movie, and so for a long time (even after she gets a replacement suit more fitted to the female form) people confused her for a male. thus, batman. once a name like that has been given to someone (i.e., someone more symbol than actual person), changing it is very, very hard. also, batwoman doesn't have quite the same ring to it as batman. i like batman more lol."
> 
> i've got a few issues with the wording, now -- the blatant erasure of batwoman as a valid character and superhero name being but one of them -- but i also thought that i should add this to the notes. after a lot of thought, i eventually decided that bryce would keep the male-designed suit, partially bc society places so much importance on the male form and status that i think, in a real scenario like this, ppl would be more likely to think fondly of a male superhero and villify a female superhero, and i think that bryce would realize this also. my feelings on this are pretty complicated, to be honest, so i'll just leave it here.
> 
> title from an old japanese proverb: "fall down seven times, get up eight." pretty much all of the dialogue in this is taken directly from the dark knight.


End file.
